Boys are four times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet a growing body of research shows that the condition is more common in girls than previously thought, strongly suggesting that new methods are required to diagnose the disorder at younger ages.
Boys are four times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet a growing body of research shows that the condition is more common in girls than previously thought, strongly suggesting that new methods are required to diagnose the disorder at younger ages.
A new study from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) examined differences in the way girls and boys on the autism spectrum used certain types of words during storytelling. This study found that autistic girls used significantly more “cognitive process” words such as “think” and “know” than autistic boys, despite comparable autism symptom severity. The results were recently published in the journal Molecular Autism.
The authors suggest that identifying differences like these opens the door to making sure girls with ASD receive the diagnosis and support they need to achieve the best possible quality of life.
“In order to place these findings in context, it’s important to understand that because girls tend to exhibit different traits than autistic boys do, they are often incorrectly diagnosed or missed entirely by standard diagnostic tools. That discrepancy also skews the research literature,” explained lead author Julia Parish-Morris, PhD, a scientist in the Center for Autism Research and faculty member in the Departments of Child Psychiatry and Biomedical & Health Informatics at CHOP. “Autism studies have historically included three to six times as many males as females. This means that we don’t yet know enough about gender differences in autism, and so we miss girls whose traits differ from those of boys.”
Read more at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
